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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29805927">Bloody fists and empty eyes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimlessvoid/pseuds/aimlessvoid'>aimlessvoid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, Cycles of abuse, I was sad writing it, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, No beta we die like lmanberg's founders, Prison Arc, Spoilers, This Is Sad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:08:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,705</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29805927</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimlessvoid/pseuds/aimlessvoid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy is laying in the small pool of water in the back of the cell, slumped over. Not moving. He’s fine. He probably just got knocked out. The searing heat seeping through Sam’s armor doesn’t even register.<br/>He gets across, eyes never leaving Tommy’s limp form. He shoves Dream to the side to get to Tommy. Tommy Tommy Tommy, whose eyes are open, dull and gray, blankly looking out into nothing. Sam feels hallow. He rips off a gauntlet and kneels down to check for a pulse. Something, anything. There has to be a way to heal him. He can’t be gone.<br/>-<br/>Sam goes to the cell.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>56</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Bloody fists and empty eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>PLEASE READ:<br/>Content warnings for descriptions of child abuse, descriptions of violence and injury, character death, manipulation, gaslighting, and brief mention of suicidal ideation. Be safe when reading any works about the SMP!</p><p> </p><p>I wrote this immediately after watching Tommy's stream and barely went back to edit so sorry for any errors. This is the first work I'm actually posting publicly so I'm a bit nervous about it, but it'll be fine.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sam needs to get to the main cell. He rushes thorough the warden shortcuts he has through each security layer, the doors and mechanisms of the prison creaking at him, accusing, taunting. </p><p><em> “It’s too late,” </em> they all say to him with their metallic scrapes and clicks and whirrs, <em> “he’s gone.” </em> He flips the switch to bring down the lava.</p><p>They had been arguing about the book, Sam listening through the microphone in the cell. He had hooked it up to be able to listen from his base and keep an eye on the cell. Dream had used it to taunt him for amusement, but its new purpose was to keep an eye on Tommy.</p><p>Tommy had said it wasn’t real, that it didn’t make sense for it to be real. That there’s no way to revive people and if there was, Schlatt certainly wouldn’t have the magic key to it. Dream got angry. Tommy’s screaming was still reverberating in Sam’s ears like a special kind of torturous tinnitus.</p><p>Tommy can’t be dead. He isn’t. Sam had just been by the cell. Tommy was hollering at him through the microphone, his usually fast and nonsensical speech somehow worse and tinged with desperation that was recognizable even through the static overlay of the intercom. </p><p>He’d begged to be let out. Said it was worse than exile. Sam thought that surely he had to be exaggerating. Tommy sounded like he was still himself, if a little panicked, but he wasn’t being driven to the brink of death by gaslighting and isolation. Sam had felt sick thinking about how Dream had described exile before. He still didn’t let Tommy out. But he was fine. He <em> is </em> fine. </p><p>The lava is low enough now that Dream’s head is visible. From across the pit, Sam can see the mask, cracked and singed, just staring at him. There’s blood splattered on it. His heart pounds in his ears.</p><p>He takes the mechanism across while the lava is still at his hips. He can’t wait. Everything already feels so slow, like moving through honey. There’s a tension building in his chest, a prickling across his skin, a pounding in his left temple. It all feels wrong.</p><p>Tommy is laying in the small pool of water in the back of the cell, slumped over. Not moving. He’s fine. He probably just got knocked out. The searing heat seeping through Sam’s armor doesn’t even register. </p><p>He gets across, eyes never leaving Tommy’s limp form. He shoves Dream to the side to get to Tommy. Tommy Tommy Tommy, whose eyes are open, dull and gray, blankly looking out into nothing. Sam feels hallow. He rips off a gauntlet and kneels down to check for a pulse. Something, anything. There has to be a way to heal him. He can’t be gone. </p><p>His arm is cool to the touch, bearing scratches and bruises that will never heal. There is no pulse. Sam chokes on the lump in his throat, struggling to breathe around it, eyes watering, hands shaking. </p><p>Tommy looks so peaceful like this. His face entirely relaxed, almost serene, save for the fear still held in his faded eyes and the dried blood trailing from his nose and mouth. Sam brushes some golden hair out of Tommy’s face. It’s a tender movement. Sam wishes Tommy would wake up, even just briefly so he could experience just a little bit more kindness instead of his last moments being stolen by a psychopath’s brutality.</p><p>There are green and purple bruises across his skin, knuckle-shaped. On the backs of his forearms which would’ve been held up to protect his face, peeking through the rips in his shirt, painted across his jaw. His collarbone looks broken. His chest is curves inward too soon on the left side, likely fractured ribs, maybe puncturing and collapsing his lung. Ribs are supposed to protect your chest. Sam was supposed to protect Tommy. Sam’s head pounds with one train of thought. <em> “Your fault, your fault, your fault, o</em>ver and over. <em> “Your fault he’s dead, didn’t save him, not fast enough, stupid, he’s gone, you failed.” </em></p><p>Everything is numb. Where there should be loss or grief or shock, there’s nothing. Sam’s limbs tremble and his eyes threaten to spill tears, but somewhere along the line his emotions were locked away, too intense to be trusted with any control. All that’s left are the frantic thoughts, the dull panic.</p><p>“You killed him,” his voice cracks as he forces the observation out. A dizziness dances in his head. He doesn’t turn to look at Dream, but instead stays dragging his eyes over Tommy’s broken body as if he could will him back to life.</p><p>Dream’s emotionless voice comes from a few feet behind, coldly justifying his actions with no regard for how twisted they were, “He called me a liar. I had enough of him.” As if anything was an excuse for the murder of a defenseless child. To believe that annoyance is cause for beating someone to death, reflected the total void of empathy that Sam had been observing for weeks.</p><p>Anger sizzles in Sam’s chest but doesn’t make it to his voice, which he struggles to maintain a tremorous veil of calm over. “You <em> are </em> a liar.”</p><p>Sam can almost feel the nonchalant shrug from the prisoner, the <em> murderer</em>. “It wasn’t his place to determine whether I’m lying or not, to accuse me,” he says, unfazed and detached. Sam isn’t sure if it would be worse if Dream felt the remorse Sam is searching for in his tone, he isn’t sure if Dream can even feel like a human would. He isn’t human. He can’t be.</p><p>Sam sucks a breath in through his teeth, screwing his eyes shut. His body feels cold all over despite the netherite armor and the nearby lava. The air feels like pinpricks on his fingers. There’s a slight nausea building in his stomach. “You said you wouldn’t kill him.”</p><p>“Oh that was ages ago,” Dream drawls, “Back when he was still important.” Sam tightens his jaw, a bitter taste settling on his tongue. Dream continues. “If he was still the center of people’s attachments like he used to be, surely someone would’ve come for him.” There’s a pause and Sam can feel his taunting stare, waiting for a response, a reaction. </p><p>Sam’s thoughts scream that he was there, that it was supposed to not be dangerous in the cell. Tommy wasn’t supposed to get hurt. He wasn’t supposed to <em> die </em>. He says nothing. </p><p>“That was my original plan, you know, to make everyone think this was just a repeat of exile so they come heroically to save him and I escape.” There’s a slimy wistfulness about how Dream explains his plan, like a villain caught up in self aggrandization being compelled to monologue pridefully about how they’ve won. It’s all to easy to conjure up a picture of Dream as a grandiose supervillain and not what he is: a twisted, power mad killer.</p><p>Dream injects an artificial parody of sympathy into his voice, making it sound how saccharin tastes, sweet with a sharply acerbic residue. “Too bad he just wasn’t good enough for anyone anymore. Hell, you didn’t even let him out.” The statement is punctuated with a small chuckle that twists the knife of guilt in Sam’s chest. He could’ve let Tommy out. He could’ve stopped Dream from killing him. He was supposed to protect him and he failed and Tommy is dead. “Well, this is why it helps to have multiple contingencies.”</p><p>Sam’s breath comes out unsteady in contrast with Dream’s overwhelming composure, his apathy. He can’t let Dream get to him. Blocking him out, Sam gently removes Tommy’s body from the water, feeling the stiffness and weight of his lifeless form. Vaguely he can feel that his ribs - three of them - are broken, not just fractured. He has the brief thought that Tommy died in pain.</p><p>Tommy’s head rests heavily against Sam’s chest.</p><p>“He was only a child,” his voice creaks and scratches like the mechanisms in the prison, which, like him, stood by as Tommy died in order to contain Dream. It wasn’t worth it.</p><p>“And now he’s a corpse.”</p><p>Sam whips around and is suddenly across the room, slamming Dream against the wall and knocking the now empty item frame to the floor. Dream laughs. “You’re a monster.” Sam’s voice was nearly a shout, bouncing off the close obsidian walls of the cell.</p><p>“<em> You </em> trapped him with me. I can’t be given all the credit now can I?” he jeers, grin plastered across his face even as Sam’s armored forearm digs into his throat. </p><p>Sam falters. Dream is just trying to get a rise out of him, but Tommy wouldn’t have been in danger if Sam had let him leave. “I.. you said you wouldn’t kill him. I thought he would be fine.” Dream said before that he needed Tommy. He didn’t kill him for a week, Sam didn’t have any reason to think any differently. Dream needed to stay locked up because he’s dangerous.</p><p>“Fine? I almost broke him before and you thought he would be perfectly safe with the man you’ve put in your maximum security prison?” Dream almost seems baffled, blinking a few times and then trying to hold in laughter. Sam presses harder against his windpipe but that just makes the laughing worse. It’s wheezing and tinged with the same mania that lurks in every word Dream speaks. Around the wild laughter and throat compression Dream manages to wheeze out, “You really are an idiot.”</p><p>Sam lets go of him. Dream drops to the ground and slides slowly down against the wall, his amusement dying down to snickering. Sam pulls down his gas mask with shaky, stiff fingers. Was the room always this small? He’s not claustrophobic. Tommy was. </p><p>Tommy had shouted, begged to be let out, said he felt trapped. Sam had told him he wouldn’t be in there forever. That he would get out. Instead he had died screaming at Dream to stop beating him to death. He probably already had a few broken bones and damaged organs at that point, it must have been agonizing. And yet he still argued with Dream, the man who abused and manipulated him over and over. All the air in Sam’s lungs is knocked out of him.</p><p>Dream’s cocky, gloating voice broke through Sam’s spiraling thoughts. “You remember visiting him, don’t you Sam? That was at the very beginning, though. I’ve told you all this already.” Sam’s pulse picked up. To amuse himself, Dream would describe Tommy’s exile in horrific detail because he knew Sam was listening somewhere. The isolation, the deterioration of Tommy’s mind and body, the loss of hope in everyone including himself. Dream didn’t miss a single detail. He gloated about how effective he was at almost driving a child to end his own life, just as he was gloating now after killing him. </p><p>“Nobody came for him. Just like now. I suppose I should’ve realized far sooner that he wasn’t important. I could’ve gotten this nonsense over with much earlier,” he said, purposely flippant but with touches of the cynical glee he was deriving from having someone’s emotions to play with. “I would’ve let him jump into the lava lake.”</p><p>The reaction is instant. There’s barely any time for his body to register the unbridled rage he feels before Sam is grabbing Dream by the collar of his prison uniform and flinging him across the cell, straight towards the lava. He hits the floor with a crack of breaking bone and stops sliding just before the edge dropped steeply into the fiery moat below.</p><p>Sam draws his trident as he stalks over to Dream, who’s grinning like a madman while clutching his fractured arm. “He was a child! You’re sick. The only reason you’re not dead is because of that stupid book!” Sam presses the center tip of the trident against Dream’s chest, right over where his heart would be if he had one. There’s a pause. The sounds of popping lava and heavy breathing fill the air. Sam’s eyes widen a bit in realization. “Wait. The book. You can bring him back. Tell me how to bring him back.”</p><p>“In return for freedom,” Dream says. It’s a simple, easily predicted answer, an offer, and a tempting one.</p><p>Sam presses the trident harder into Dream’s chest, causing him to lean back slightly over the precipice. He can’t agree to that. Not after everything that he’s done to keep Dream inside. Tommy was the one who wanted Dream locked up in the first place, letting him out would be another betrayal. “No. You murdered a child.”</p><p>“You won’t say his name,” Dream deflects, no hint of fear in his voice, not the slightest apprehension. Sam has only ever heard him angry or sickly amused. With the looming threat of burning to death, even if he would respawn, Dream is emotionless. “Is that a form of denial, oh stoic and impartial warden? His body is right there. Tommy’s body,” he gestures to where Sam had lay Tommy down. </p><p>Saying Tommy’s name aloud is too close to acceptance of his death. He was a good kid. Brave, strong, impulsive, and stubborn and he didn’t deserve to die at the hands of his abuser in a cramped cell surrounded by lava. It shouldn’t have happened. Sam did the risk calculus of keeping Tommy in there and Dream wasn’t supposed to hurt him. It was all too unreal. Too unjust and tragic for someone so bright and impactful and so <em> young </em>. </p><p>Sam can’t let himself accept it. This isn’t the end. “Tell me how to bring him back.”</p><p>Dream scoffs. His tongue flicks out to lick off some of the blood on the corner of his mouth. “You won’t let me go. Funny how your obsession with keeping me here and holding off the inevitable is what made you sacrifice Tommy.”</p><p>Sam grips the trident tighter in his fists. Dream was the one that killed Tommy. No one else. “I didn’t- you killed him. Just you.”</p><p>“And that’s how he’ll stay,” Dream says, as ambivalent as ever. Sam opens his mouth to retort, to demand Dream bring him back, to threaten him with constant pain and torment, but Dream speaks first. “The book was never real,” there’s a little smile tugging at his split lips. “It was a ploy to get in here, to get to this point, trapped with Tommy. I could be free and it would be his fault for being so important. But he was the opposite, useless.”</p><p>“You’re lying.” He has to be. He’s just trying to toy with Sam, to feed off of his grief and add more layers to the complex web of lies that’s already been spun.</p><p>Dream’s smirk curls into a predatory smile. He’s always taken pride in the uncertainty that layers of lies can create, and now it’s impossible to discern the truth. “Death is permanent for those of you that can die.”</p><p>“You’re <em> never </em> getting out of here,” Sam snarls. It doesn’t matter if there’s a revive book or not, Sam will not let this inhuman murderer ever see the light of day again. </p><p>“We’ll see about that.” Sam pushes him off the edge. </p><p>As the smell of burning flesh fills the air, Sam goes to put his gauntlet back on and carefully pick up Tommy’s body. He’s so small. Glassy gray eyes look sadly up at Sam. Sam focuses on getting back across, getting Tommy out of the prison, something he should’ve done much sooner. Before he was filled with regret and loss. Before Dream took Tommy from him, from everyone. There’s an overwhelming weight in Sam’s chest that reminds him constantly of his guilt. His responsibility. Of how he failed to protect Tommy because of faulty logic and skewed priorities. </p><p>As he’s riding the mechanism back across the lava, Dream respawns, dropping from the tunnel into the water where Tommy died. That same smug smile is plastered on his masked face, like he’d won first prize in some sick competition. </p><p>Something deep in Sam’s gut tells him to be afraid.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you enjoyed this, consider following me here where I'll post my future projects that are currently in the planning stages and on twitter @aimlessvoid1 where I'll post updates about things I'm writing and also general mcyt fan posts. I'll also accept writing ideas on my twitter in my dms so hit me up if you want something written but don't want to write it yourself because that is a mood. Maybe leave a comment and tell me what you thought too!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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